MudMan

@MudMan@fedia.io

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The problem with sleeper ships⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I mean, we're halfway through... not sure if a novel, but it's surely like a young adult TV show or the setup for a looter shooter or something.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What JRPG combat is your favorite?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I'll take persona, although it's been way too many games with the same setup. Ditto for the Trails series.

  Honestly, I don't think it got any better than ATB systems in FF 6 and 7. Everybody else is either riffing on those or spending so much money they think they can't be those and need to be Devil May Cry instead.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The problem with sleeper ships⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  You kind of answer your own question there, honestly. If you're at the point where you can somehow convince hundreds to thousands of people to get a one way ticket to turning into a space popsicle for the chance of eventually turning into xenomorph chowder, then you can probably also do better than that eventually.

  So from that perspective we both hard agree that interstellar travel is probably not practical to any degree of technology below full-on Star Trek. But also, we both hard disagree that "shoot people into space to die as soon as you have the ability" is something that any society is ever going to do. If some modicum of a survival instinct is needed to evolve intelligence, then the answer to the Fermi paradox is that aliens looked at the practicalities of actual interstellar travel and went "Hell, no".

  If anybody out there is willing to do interstellar colonization you better believe that it's because their star is about to pop and they'll try that exactly once.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The problem with sleeper ships⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It's a good argument against trying sleeper/generation ships.

  In practice, though, the actual sleepers would be so happy to arrive to find a nice McDonalds and a charming small town instead of shuttling down into the middle of uninhabited Arrakis with a 3D printer and a prayer.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon finds a plot hole⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Wait, so it gets you high on top of everything else? People would be using this even if it did nothing else, what the heck?

  Stop it. Stop making me think about the stupid wizard thing. Not worth it. So dumb.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon finds a plot hole⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Wait, the reason they don't use this potion is that it's hard to make?

  Wouldn't you make it once and use it to make more by just dumping random ingredients in a pot to get an infinite supply? It seems like the wishing for more wishes situation pretty straight up.

  This is what I get for letting you trick me into thinking about this dumb thing, I suppose.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Geohydtotypography⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Hold on, over how many lines? How was this estimate made? I demand to know what latitude gets the first line change for a given text. Also how much text you'd need and whether we have a single source that would fit.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How did gravity worked on the Death Star?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Oh, yeah, no, but that's because I'm a nerd.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How did gravity worked on the Death Star?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Well, no, they're meant to make the pew-pew laser fights look like a film about airplane dogfights. So yeah, way overthinking it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How did gravity worked on the Death Star?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Well, yeah, but we've also seen the ones that look like a hamburger patty fly through the atmosphere (and, in fact, outmaneouver the winged ones). Clearly that's not what they're for.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How did gravity worked on the Death Star?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Even if it was massive enough, if they can keep people sticking to the ground in a tiny ship they can surely counteract the gravity of a space station.

  Also, most of their spaceships have wings. We're thinking about this way too hard.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Somehow USB disks are still the easiest and most reliable way⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Old USB implementation used to be a finicky nightmare, though. You make it sound like it wasn't changed for a reason, MTP connectivity on Android as it is now is so much more functional, as well as safer.

  In any case, that solves the misunderstanding. I thought you meant you couldn't directly access phone storage anymore, which isn't the case.

  The printer scenario seems like an edge case to me. I mean, MTP has been the default for what? Over a decade? If you have a recent printer you're probably fine (also, it probably has wifi and a dedicated mobile app or at least enough third party support to be used from your phone regardless). If your printer is older than that you're probably better served by going through your PC first anyway. Sure, you don't get direct USB access to printing photos, but now we're talking about a very specific feature that was in use for a very specific sliver of time, and it requires you to be tethered to a device anyway. I don't think that's enough to justify legacy storage support on phones.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Somehow USB disks are still the easiest and most reliable way⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Cx Expolorer on Android can access network shares and Samba shares like a desktop OS. It really isn't a particularly outdated option, it's so much less fiddly than direct drive access from a PC and it effectively works just like a USB stick, interface-wise, without having to do the whole "where did I put my thumbdrive" dance each time.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Somehow USB disks are still the easiest and most reliable way⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Wait, what feature? You can't access the phone's storage? I'm pretty sure I can access my phone's storage.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨You can't act fabulous after a hip surgery.⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, the content itself makes perfect sense, I think what got me was the airplane security leaflet pictures. Makes it seem like you pulled your hip from a vaguely disappointing Amazon cardboard box along with a cheap gadget.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨You can't act fabulous after a hip surgery.⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  So I'm the only one having weird posthumanist body horror type feelings at the concept of being given an instruction manual for your artificial body parts, including the equivalent of a void warranty sticker?

  Just me? Cool, cool. Quietly unlocking new phobias over here.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Clay content⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  No, please, free me from this. Because in my head I'm super annoyed at how well this seems to work and I need rescuing from an expert.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Let's discuss: Deus Ex⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Kind of overrated? I mean, it was cool to see a bit more of a palatable cinematic presentation in real time to go along with the late 90s PC jank, and that theme did kick ass, but it's less groundbreaking in context than I think people give it credit for. And it doesn't hold up nearly as well as System Shock 2, in my book.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Was it a good thing that SNW explicitly said the Federation is socialist?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Oh, yeah, it's ALL handwavy bulls#!t. It's a 60s sci-fi TV show. A great one, but... you know.

  I'll say that the transporters are some of the most consistent pieces of tech they came up with, though, at least as they get explored over time. They need a beam, they are disrupted by shields and interference, they turn people into a data buffer "pattern" that seems to follow the way data would behave, in that they can add and substract to it. You need to assume they don't use them as full-on cloning machines because of regulations, rather than tech limits, but it mostly makes sense.

  Unfortunately the version that makes sense is the most disturbing interpretation, so they still need to handwave the crap out of it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Was it a good thing that SNW explicitly said the Federation is socialist?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, I think in canon the curvy bit at the front of the ship (or the nacelles, sometimes) is just gathering dust to then burn into energy. It gets trickier with the transporter, because in theory the dust is going into a matter/antimatter thing, but if the transporter is fueling itself from the body it's disintegrating... well, where's the antimatter?

  I think in their minds the transporter isn't doing that, and is instead taking energy to both turn a person into a pattern and then build the pattern back into a person. Seems like a waste, but I guess the raw matter isn't the real concern here.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Was it a good thing that SNW explicitly said the Federation is socialist?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  But we know that's not how transporters work. If that was the case you wouldn't be able to get "accidents" where you end up with two copies of the same guy. The transporter must work like the replicator, not the other way around.

  Also, that doesn't work with some of the stuff they say, like how they don't replicate anything alive, and so food does taste noticeably different. Plus... you know, no massive farm deck anywhere on the Enterprise and no transwarp to beam that in from a planet, so... we're going to have to accept this stuff may be just handwavy bulls#!t at some point.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Was it a good thing that SNW explicitly said the Federation is socialist?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I'm a bit shocked that nobody has pointed out the obvious:

  The economics of Star Trek are super inconsistent and make no sense because multiple writers had a crack and they each liked and believed different things.

  Sometimes it's a post-scarcity socialist utopia where money is obsolete. Other times, Picard invites someone out for a date and she answers "you buying?".

  This is obvious enough that multiple people have tried to fix it, which as always in franchise worldbuilding only makes things less consistent and more complicated. So now some things just can't be properly replicated. Sometimes it's because of regulations and laws, other times it's because of technology limitations. Sometimes the Federation doesn't use money but they still have it for trade, other times they use money, just for random commodities.

  The middle of the road for Trek seems to be some form of socialdemocracy where you're provided with anything you need and labor is largely vocational, but out in space there is enough variation over time and different areas that there is still a bit of a pseudo-capitalist economy even in regions where Federation-level post-scarcity tech is still available. Go in any more detail and the whole thing breaks down.

  This goes for other political elements of the series, too. Picard gets super mad at the notion of endorsing religious beliefs in a prewarp society because he finds it barbaric. Meanwhile, Sisko is out there becoming Bajoran Space Jesus and everybody is just cool with that.

  It's almost like Rick Berman's, Ronald D. Moore's and Gene Roddenberry's political beliefs were different from each other's, huh?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Was it a good thing that SNW explicitly said the Federation is socialist?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  You know the irony of this interpretation? By canon, replicators are energy to matter conversion devices. Basically a 3D printer using relativity to poof atoms into existence from an energy source.

  Replicators are straight-up the most expensive way to make anything. Using that technology to make you a cup of tea is the most inefficient use of any resource put on screen in media history. It's absurd. The notion that instead of heating up water you would go ahead and make the atoms out of energy is so much worse than just filling in a space station's worth of water and carrying it with you into space just to keep Picard's Earl Grey habit going.

  It's not the replicator at all that drives the post-scarcity, it's whatever nonsense antimatter generator stuff dilithium is enabling where they get infinite energy forever. Although we know dilithium is a limited resource, since they don't seem to just replicate some when they need it, so... somebody should do the math there and figure out how expensive all those Janeway coffees actually are.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Was it a good thing that SNW explicitly said the Federation is socialist?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Hi.

  That's called "socialdemocracy" and it's been around for centuries. It's actually older than the marxist concept of socialism, if you're gonna get pedantic about it.

  I get that Americans have completely sandblasted off any remaining meaning in the word "socialism", first by having conservatives use it as an insult and then by having weird US lefties get all purity test about it, but most of the world has a pretty clear picture of socialdemocracy, it's not that ambiguous. Most socialdemocrat parties across the planet are called some version of "Socialist Party", "Labour Party" or "Worker's Party". It's a thing.

  So no, it's not a bad habit. It's just... what that's called. It does get easy to mix up with the Marxist concept of socialism, which is likely why most marxist parties advocating for a socialist society are called "Communist Party" instead. The bad habit is to not challenge the fundamentally conservative, deliberate confusion between the two that any range of neoliberals and protofascists continue to use to pretend milquetoast socialdemocratic policy is some form of revolutionary action.

  Man, US politics are so weird.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What does your booger feel like rn?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  This is missing a picture of a razor blade paired with a leg bone sticking out after a compound fracture.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I'm am myself and myself is bad at fitting in⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I had genuinely never struggled to convince somebody I'm not American, this is amazing.

  Specifically American, too, because in your scenario being British or Irish wouldn't have worked. I'm slightly relieved that you at least considered Australia eventually.

  OK, how about this, I'll give you a little bit. I shouldn't because screw you, you don't have a right to my life history, let alone to evaluate my cultural background against your arbitrary weird anglocentric preconceptions, but this is too fascinating to drop now.

  So when I went to school our system was very into integration. I went to the same classroom as kids who had Down syndrome and cerebral palsy until I was maybe eleven, twelve? I genuinely don't know what Americans call that grade or year, for us it would have been what, 4th, 5th? They've changed the structure and numbering now, so it's hard to keep track. One of them had a habit of standing up in the middle of boring classes and start to randomly narrate sports matches out loud (soccer, specifically, because again, not American), and we thought it was awesome and hilarious, and thought he was cool and mostly were kinda nice to him as a result. He was a nice kid. I see him walking around town sometimes still.

  That memory generally endeared me to integrating kids in classes where it makes sense, but I've heard enough counterpoints from professional educators about the uses of keeping kids with special needs in smaller classes to get more specific help that I don't have a strong opinion about it. My understanding is that consensus on that one is reversed, and the kids in my life now that have specific needs are either in dedicated support groups or getting individual tutoring during the integrated classes. This is all public school I'm talking about.

  Now, here's the thing, I actually don't know if that transition could have happened in the US because, again, I am not American and I've never been to school in the US. I assume all the tropes in movies aren't fully accurate and Mean Girls and Dangerous Minds aren't documentaries, but who knows? My point is that I don't, and I'm not gonna be prescriptive about it or assume that everybody else's experiences are the same as my own.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I'm am myself and myself is bad at fitting in⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Holy crap, does that have strong "shit Americans say" Reddit energy. The friends I have who actually wanted to live in the US had to worry about getting a green card for a decade, but I apparently qualified for a passport after week two. I mean, I never wanted to move there permanently, even when offered, but it's good to know it would have been that easy.

  Aaanyway, if you wanted to reveal my place of origin you probably could, given how you're fond of digging through my post history. Go see if you can put together the clues. Or don't, because if I did want to share that I would have at this point, don't you think?

  Turns out that I don't feel like passing whatever litmus test for "foreignness" you may have, my hopefully accidentally exceptionalist friend. The fact that you're not seeing how this entire line of questioning is getting very weird is definitely making my point and should absolutely give you pause.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I'm am myself and myself is bad at fitting in⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Hey, you may be shocked by this idea, but sometimes people live in places where they weren't born for a while.

  But also, even if they didn't, it turns out you can't exist in the world, let alone the Internet, without being constantly exposed to an absolute firehose of US-generated media, including all those very specific references. And, by extension, we also have to be concerned about you weirdos not messing up without having any agency on the outcomes of your bizarre political system (so don't mess it up for us this November, thanks in advance).

  That's the entire impetus of my intervention in this thread, the ongoing frustration of seeing Americans, both on the left and the right, be constantly convinced that everything everywhere works just like it does around them and that nobody has thought about it or come up with different solutions or had different needs elsewhere.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I'm am myself and myself is bad at fitting in⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I am neither American nor a native English speaker, but thanks, I'm gonna take that as a compliment. The rest of my point stands.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I'm am myself and myself is bad at fitting in⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I have, in fact, gone through the school system in some of the places you mention, yeah. Had people with very specific special needs close to me go through several of them, too. Had people close to me be teachers in some of them for decades as well. Some of them provided better support than others, most had some type of system that was definitely focused on specific support based on individual needs. Some have changed during my lifetime, because there are different opinions on what achieves that better.

  And here's the rub, I'm still not an expert. I still wouldn't make sweeping generalizations about it. I absolutely don't claim to have all the answers or see obvious flaws with obvious solutions. Certainly not assume the examples I know are close enough to every other country to not make a difference.

  But hey, that's just me.